While they seem like an invention of the 2010s, all these Criterion Months have taught me that the idea of shared cinematic universes actually goes way back. So it comes as no surprise to report that legacy sequels – a related and seemingly modern phenomenon – were actually invented by François Truffaut in the 1960s (eat your heart out, Richard Linklater). In between making some of the best movies ever made, Truffaut spent his career returning to his first film and its leading man, Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, giving audiences a chance to check in on the troubled boy as he grew up.
But first, a detour. While the second *feature* film, Stolen Kisses is actually the third adventure of Antoine Doinel. Following 1959’s The 400 Blows, Truffaut first returned to Antoine in a short film called Antoine and Colette, which served as the opening segment of the 1962 anthology Love at Twenty. For those of you confused about the math, Antoine is actually only 17 years old in the short so I dunno, I guess they thought “20” sounded cool. Antoine and Colette is available in both The Adventures of Antoine Doinel box set and on the Criterion Channel, so I did my due diligence and check it out too.
The good news: Antoine is doing all right for himself! He never went back to school or his parents, which is probably for the best, and instead he lives alone and works at Philips manufacturing LPs. All things considered, he seems pretty well-adjusted… until one night he spots Colette (Marie-France Pisier) at a concert and falls in love at first sight. Antoine and Colette strike up a friendship and, most wholesomely, Antoine becomes close to Colette’s parents. But Colette doesn’t seem interested in taking their relationship to the next level, despite Antoine’s, shall we say… “grandiose” gestures, like giving her the first LP he ever pressed (awwww) or moving into an apartment across the street from her parents (dear god). Needless to say, things don’t work out and the short ends with Colette inviting Antoine over for dinner with her family, which ends almost immediately, when her date comes to pick her up and Antoine is left silently watching TV with her folks.
Following real time, six years later Stolen Kisses begins with Antoine’s dishonorable discharge from the army. He can’t help but smirk as his superior chews him out one last time for his history of disobedience, this dude does not like taking orders. He immediately goes and sleeps with a prostitute, then goes to check on his sweetheart Christine (Claude Jade), who is out, but he nonetheless receives a warm welcome from her parents who feed him and even get him a job as the night clerk at a hotel. Seemingly not much time later, Christine visits Antoine at work and they seem like they have a little bit of chemistry. And then not much longer after that, Antoine loses his job when a private eye tricks him into allowing a man to walk in on his wife having an affair, which causes a scene and requires the police to be called.
But every day he’s hustling, so Antoine strikes up a friendship wit the PI and gets hired by his agency. As he learns the tricks of the trade, Antoine struggles to split his attentions with Christine. This struggle hits its apex on Antoine’s weirdest case: a local businessman, Mr. Tabard (Michael Lonsdale) hires the agency to figure out why he’s such a loser. Despite sucking at it, Antoine goes undercover at Tabard’s shoe stores as a stock boy, observing his employees. Tabard has no friends but he does have a glamorous wife, Fabienne (Delphine Seyrig) who, like Colette before, Antoine is instantly, powerfully smitten by. Sounds like trouble, doesn’t it? Will Antoine be able to maintain his professional standards (lol) and stay loyal to Christine?
Jean-Pierre Léaud and François Truffaut’s creative relationship sounds like a truly unique one, paralleled maybe only by Jason Schwartzman and Wes Anderson. After The 400 Blows, Truffaut took responsibility for Léaud after he was expelled from school, renting him a studio apartment and giving him work in the industry. Truffaut was inspired by Léaud to return to Antoine Doinel and wrote scenes specifically because he wanted to see Léaud perform them. For his part, Léaud grew up into quite the leading man and ended up collaborating with most of the big names of the French New Wave. Personally, my favorite fun fact is that he shared scenes with his hero Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris but didn’t actually work with him, because Léaud shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays.
As for Stolen Kisses itself, well, I would have never guessed that the sequel to The 400 Blows would be so light and funny! Despite what the title suggests, Antoine and Christine’s romance is more the movie’s through line than its main attraction. For me, this was more about Antoine continually being hilariously bad at jobs and relationships but it all being low stakes enough that it’s just fun. And that’s kind of what being a young man is meant to be like, right? Trying things, failing, figuring yourself out. Now the only question that remains is: will the next one take another leap forward? Or will it, like so many legacy sequels today, just be more of this forever?